Factory Girl C+

On DVD, Rated R, 99 minutes

As quasi-biopic of socialite heiress, fashionista, and occasional Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick, Factory Girl, chocked full of first-rate acting, intrigues but fails to illuminate. The title overtly refers to Andy Warhol’s infamous art/film studio “The Factory,” the epicenter (or so the story goes) of the creative train wreck that was NYC’s art, drug, and sex culture of the mid-sixties to early seventies, and Edie’s role for a period of time as its “it” girl. The title also works (or once to) as a judgment on a system that turned a fragile, gifted girl into one of thousands of silk-screened copies of Marilyn Monroe’s own self-destructive spiral of sex and drugs just a few years earlier.

The film begins with Sedgwick dropping out of school to head to New York where she hopes to make it as an artist. A trust-fund baby and coming from one of the oldest and most storied families in United States’ history, she is dependent on her oil-barren and occasional artist father to support her extravagant lifestyle. Her father also molested her as a child (or so the film claims) screwing her up royally and playing into the “searching for an a-sexual daddy” themes that help explain her attraction and loyalty to Warhol. Once arriving into NYC, she quickly becomes fast-friends with Warhol who at first promises to help her get into the galleries. She subsequently stars in several of his “films” and generally becomes his plutonic companion and a perverted piece of Warhol art. Warhol is jealous when Edie becomes infatuated with Bob Dylan (a subplot where the film appears to play a bit loose with definitive fact), cruelly ridiculing her then cutting her out of his life completely, at which point the ever-present drugs and alcohol take over.

Sienna Miller, hitherto noteworthy for being Jude Law’s wronged fiancé and one of the few women around who’s beauty can hold it’s own against his, has a break-out performance reminiscent of Angelina Jolie’s in Gia. While the film may not be commonly watched and is no masterpiece, it will be remembered as the moment she went from being a pretty face to being an actress. The writing hampers her in some ways, but she manages the fine line of brazenness and fragility, talent and brokenness which for a time Sedgwick walked, with finesse and feel. Almost unrecognizable, Guy Pearce does what he can (which is substantial) with Warhol’s character. Hayden Christensen who I have mixed respect for (great in Shattered Glass (B+) and My Life as a House (A-), horrendous in the Star Wars II and III) misfires again here as a young Dylan. His halting speech pattern is annoying by now and plays like Dylan is inarticulate—obviously untrue.

The film raises interesting issues, but in the end can’t support its own weight, eventually offering no answers and few insights. At only ninety-nine minutes, ten to fifteen more minutes exploring one or two of these themes more fully would have been time well spent. Still, the characters are intriguing as is the glimpse into their moral decay. C+